3. Town
By the time I ate and walked up to my room, the Trick had already changed out of their uniforms and gathered in my room.
"What's the hurry? I'm going to shower first," I drawled.
"Shower!" they screamed. "What are you? a preacher? You don't shower before you go to Town!"
Outvoiced, I reached in the closet for a pair of slacks.
"What are you? Got a date or something? You don't wear slacks to Town." They were dressed in Town clothes, that is, everything from shoes to shorts which could be ripped, stolen, or shit on for all they cared. I tried a pair of Levi's.
"What are you, a new guy? No Levi's, no blue jeans off base!"
I took another pair, light brown, a knit shirt and a pair of buff Wellingtons, and sat them on the table. "Okay, troops, out," I said, opening the door. "You just wait in the Orderly Room, I'll be right down. As soon as I shit, shower, and shave."
They grumbled, but they left, and were waiting in the Day Room, playing pool and shuffleboard when I came down.
"So you're lovely, Sarge," Cagle said, "but Town is all used up by now." It was 0745.
"I hear you're going to Town," Tetrick said from behind his desk. He handed me the sheaf of three-day passes. "Make 'em sign out." His face was pale and bloated from a hangover, but he smiled. "They'll take care of you until you can take care of them. I hope. But watch yourselves. Capt. Saunders is going stateside for six weeks, and Lt. Dottlinger will have the Company. He don't like guys who go to Town. So stay clean.
"You guys don't let him fall in love," Tetrick shouted as we left.
Lt. Dottlinger was coming in, his OD armband still crinkling his shirt sleeve, as we tumbled out front to wait for the cabs to take us to the gate. He answered our quick salutes with a crisp touch of ball-point pen to cap bill and a grim, brimstone eye.
Angeles, in spite of its reputation as a minor version of heaven, was a collection of bamboo huts, wooden, tin-roofed buildings, dusty streets, open sewers, and seventy-five or eighty bars. It wasn't quite as modern as a Mexican border town, which it very much resembled, nor as dirty as a large city slum. The streets always seemed festive in a way, filled with people, dogs and pigs wandering without the help of crosswalks or traffic lights. I liked the look of the people. They were cleaner than I had been led to expect, and without that wolfish, greedy glare of the citizens of Columbus, Georgia or Fayetteville, North Carolina or Kileen, Texas.
Our cabs stopped in the center of Town where five streets intersected. Three kiosks were around the plaza, three of the half-dozen or so enclosed ones. The others, and there seemed to be hundreds spotted around Town, were open to the weather. It was explained to me that kiosks were for serious drinking, since the barmaids were indecently nice and wouldn't even meet an American eye on the street. The whores were in the bars or in houses. Trick Two, my Trick, usually gathered at the Plaza.
We filed into the narrow, high room, jammed ourselves around an elongated horseshoe bar on small, hard bamboo stools. Venetian blinds held off the early morning sun around one long and one short side, and three Edwardian fans ladled the air above the bar, buzzing and stirring as much breeze as fat, lazy blowflies. A huge hulk of chrome and plastic commanded the scene from a niche high in the end wall, contentedly bubbling, watching over her foolish children.
"Roll Call, mama-san," Morning said to the large, middle-aged owner of the Plaza.
"Aaiiieeee," she giggled, taking her glasses off. "Take business to Chew Chi's." She sat her glasses back on her face as if they might protect her as Trick Two sat down.
"Too early," said a heart-faced girl behind the bar. Her smile exposed a front tooth circled in gold-fill which formed a small, white heart on her tooth. She and two other girls gave everyone a cold, thick San Miguel and a utilitarian tumbler of such thickness it might be used for anything from weapon to anchor – and it was. Beers were neatly poured, then Morning pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, and began:
"In so much as this is a world we didn't make, filled with dangers we refuse to understand, we of Trick Two do hereby withdraw ourselves from the arms race, the space race, and the human race for these next three days; and being the finest of fellows, comrades and carousers, humbly raise our glasses in defiance and bow our heads in shame, and here do solemnly swear (or affirm) to drink until the moon falls from the heavens, the heavens on our heads, or we, fat chance, on our asses.
"Agreed?"
"Aye!"
"I shall read the roll of the honored and infamous alike."
"Thomas Earl Novotny," Morning intoned.
"Aye," growled Novotny, then stood and poured the beer down his throat.
(Novotny, the cowboy, hated the Army so bad that when he made Specialist Fifth Class he would change out of uniform rather than eat in the NCO mess area. But he was a good soldier. Perhaps he just didn't like people telling him what to do.)
"John Christopher Cagle." He choked halfway down, but finished his glass.
(Cagle, the monkey, the dancer, the nervous mover. His father was a chaplain, a major in the Air Force who believed, according to Cagle, God to be a combination between General Eisenhower and General Motors. "That Great Used Car Salesman in the sky," Cagle used to sing. He had been expelled from Indiana University his senior year for trying to break into the Kinsey Institute of Sexual Research's pornographic collection, and had been in trouble ever since. The Company had long since given him up so long as he hurt no one but himself and his eyebrows. His greatest triumph came when he returned from thirty days' leave in Japan. He stepped off the plane wearing a Japanese private's uniform, carrying a samurai sword and sporting a goatee. But he never told anyone how he got on that plane.)
"Doyle Quinn."
"Ha!" Quinn shouted, "Now the serious drinkin' begins!" and tossed down his beer.
(Quinn. His steady shack, Dottie the bowlegged whore, cared for him and hid his shoes so he would be faithful, but nothing worked, so she tried suicide from the second floor of a nipa hut and became Dottie the bowlegged whore. But none of this made the slightest impression on Quinn. He was a sly, dark Irishman from the City, tough and wild, never caring if the sun came up. A false tooth set in his jaw had been broken in a fight, leaving only the gray, metallic core, and Quinn didn't bother to have it fixed. Born to streets and alleys, poverty and race riots, his laughter had acquired a stony, mocking edge to it which said, "I've seen the whole mess and I don't give a shit for it, so let's have another.")
"David Douglas Franklin."
"Ha!" he snorted and snarled like his idol, Quinn.
(His parents thought they had brought the wrong baby home from the hospital, and in shame never had another. Mr. Franklin was a typewriter repairman and his wife cashiered in a restaurant in Bristol, Connecticut, and their son had an IQ upwards of immeasurability. They prevented him from reading until he was four by slapping the Reader's Digest out of his hands. They thought he wanted to tear out the pages. They hid him in a back room when friends came to play bridge because he always won. Once they discovered that he wasn't a freak, Franklin went on display throughout the neighborhood. He finished eight years of school in two, then missed four years because he wouldn't go, then two more because he failed when they made him attend school, but managed to finish with his original class which was all he wanted, anyway. His father's finest moment came as he decked the school psychologist for suggesting that the child might have family troubles. I once heard Franklin say, "I rather be dumb than have acne.")